Adventures In Obtaining Decent Internet Service (Part 1)
Sorry, I couldn’t come up with a snazzier title.
EDIT: This is gonna have to be split up into two entries…I really need to learn how to better economize my words :P.
I moved back in with the parents in early July—long story, and I won’t get into it—and sadly had to kiss goodbye the joys of paying only $40 a month for 10/1 Road Runner Cable. Excellent reliability (except for a disconnect at exactly 2:05 AM every day, and I never did discover why that happened) and 10/1 speeds for $40 a month? Not a bad deal, eh?
So what did I come home to? 3/512 AT&T DSL. Decent speeds, when I was the only one actually using the internet. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen very often, and to compound the problem, my brother started messing around with a webcam. At times in the evening, the connection would lag like mad. I also noticed that my ping times were horrible, usually around 150ms, according to speedtest.net. I figured, for $25 a month, the speeds we were getting weren’t that unbearable.
A week later, I upgraded to 6/512 for $10 more a month. All of a sudden, my ping times dropped to the low 20s, and evening lags appeared to be a thing of the past. Everything looked good.
A couple weeks later, the DSL connection because virtually unusable in the evenings. After dealing with drops every few minutes for three days straight, I called AT&T DSL support to report a problem. I told the tech that I was having internet issues, and the tech could only tell me that he detected a weak signal entering my DSL modem. He offered to send a tech out to check the wiring leading to the house. Before I could agree, though, the tech mentioned that I could be charged if it was determined that the problem with my connection was on my end.
Thinking nothing of that remark at the time, I had the tech schedule an appointment. For reasons that elude me at the time—perhaps the local call center was closed—he could not get me set up with an appointment right then and there. No problem, I thought; I was given the phone number to the call center with a support ticket.
I went weeks without having a single serious line issue again, so naturally (stupidly?) I never gave the local call center a ring. Everything looked good, until about a month ago, when the connectivity issues returned. I went two hours with a complete outage before I decided to call tech support again.
This time I was advised to remove the DSL filter from the wall and plug the phone cable directly into the modem. That’s when I noticed something peculiar: connected to one of those wall-mounted DSL filters was a second DSL filter! All the connections were made properly—the second filter was connected to the correct jack on the wall-mounted filter, and the DSL modem was plugged into the “DSL” jack of the second filter—but I thought it was odd nonetheless.
I removed both filters, plugged the modem directly into the wall jack, and lo and behold, I was able to establish a connection immediately. Coincidence? Hmmmm. Anyway, the tech ran his tests, and again advised me that he was detecting a very weak signal going to my DSL modem. Like the first tech I dealt with, he advised me to allow a tech to come by and analyze the wiring leading to my house. This time, though, in a seemingly threatening voice, the tech reminded me that I would be billed if the tech found the problem to be on my end. Frustrated, I asked for a clarification. The tech explained that, if the tech found no issues with the wiring, I would have been billed for the visit.
Not at all wanting to take that chance—knowing AT&T’s reputation, I certainly did not—I declined the offer. The tech then reminded me that I could always try to fix any internet connection issues with a simple reboot of the modem…and that’s when I hung up on him. I looked at the DSL modem, saw that the lines remained solid green, and prayed that I wouldn’t have to call back.
The serious connectivity issues came back last week, and yesterday, I had enough. Between the hours of 6-10pm, I wasn’t able to stay online for more than ten minutes at a time. It was time for me to give Charter Cable a try.
Part two to come tomorrow.
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